Wednesday, January 20, 2016

My response to David Mills on white privilege

I was very surprised to click on a link and find a post on white privilege written by David Mills. Mills is a former executive editor of First Things, which I had always thought was a somewhat conservative religious periodical. Mills's views on white privilege, however, are indistinguishable from the usual radical secular liberal viewpoint.

Here's something about Mills's post. It might follow the usual far left views, but it is written more calmly and therefore comes across as more reasonable than usual. It's as if a grown up had taken on a childish idea and given it a more polished presentation.

Even so, when you boil down his argument, there's not much there. I tried to explain this in the following comment I left at the site:

The problem with the theory about white privilege is that to make it work the concept of privilege itself has to be narrowed down. In effect it becomes this: "it is a privilege to be the majority ethnic group because you are considered the norm". Which then makes the ethnic Japanese in Japan privileged; the Han Chinese in China privileged and so on. Logically, then, there should be no majority ethnic group anywhere, which then means that no group is in a position to reproduce its own distinctive culture.

Whites are not privileged in other senses of the term. Asian Americans, for instance, do noticeably better than white Americans when it comes to average income; educational outcomes; family stability; professional status and so on. Nor are whites privileged when you look at the global situation: whites are a minority group whose position is everywhere on the decline. Talking about white privilege at this time in history obscures the vulnerable position that nearly all white communities find themselves in.

I could also have mentioned that whites don't really get to benefit from majority status in the kind of easy way that Mills suggests, as we are the group that gets attacked as an oppressor group within the institutions of society, particularly within the schools and universities.

If you do happen to choose to leave a comment at the website I linked to, I'd ask that you make it as calmly reasoned as you can as that is far more likely to have an effect on the readership than anger or indignation.

11 comments:

'White Supremacy and privilege': just means White people control their lives, their society, their identity and their future as Whites.

Ending 'White Supremacy and privilege': just means these people (and the state) controls your life, your future and everything..... and forever.﻿ IT means no more White people. Its just attempting to excuse White genocide.

One thing I find interesting is that an idea like white privilege, which comes out of a secular liberal world view, is so gripping for a religious "conservative" like David Mills. I think one thing we should be calling such people out on is that they are not only betraying their own race, but that they are "losing their religion", i.e. that they are allowing themselves to be absorbed by a secular modernity.

The complete surrender to secular modernism is bad enough but what's really disheartening is the level of guilt these "Christian" "conservatives" have. Where did this insane wallowing in guilt come from?

Christians were not responsible for any of the horrors of the 20th century. Atheists do perhaps have some cause for guilt - atheists really did massacre millions of people. If anyone should be wallowing in guilt it's the atheist secular modernists.

And the perpetrators of the horrors of the past hundred years were certainly not all white. Many were yellow (Mao was possibly the worst mass murderer in history). Many were black (the genocide in Rwanda). White people have never had a monopoly on mass murder.

And white Christians played an overwhelmingly important role in ending slavery. White Christians probably have less to feel guilty about than anyone.

So why do these "Christian" "conservatives" indulge in these orgies of self-flagellation? Why did Christianity become so self-hating? Is it a fundamental flaw in Christianity? I'm inclined to think that the combination of Christianity and modernism is peculiarly toxic.

I'm inclined to think that the combination of Christianity and modernism is peculiarly toxic.

Seems to be. What staggers me are the clerics, who have supposedly dedicated their lives to a particular theology, but who then say things that are clearly drawn from a secular political ideology. It's as if liberalism is more gripping to them than their religion.

It's also interesting that discussions on "privilege" always seem to ignore the most privileged groups of all. The Asian Americans you mentioned being a case in point. And of course Jews. Why aren't Asian Americans and Jews demanding an end to Asian American and Jewish privilege? The answer of course is that Asian Americans and Jews don't hate themselves. Whites are the only ethnic group on the planet who hate themselves.

Class also gets ignored. Recent studies have shown extraordinary increases in death rates among white working class American men. Their lack of privilege is literally killing them. Why don't Christian conservatives express any concern about this?

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on an alarming new study: researchers have documented that the least educated white Americans are experiencing sharp declines in life expectancy. Between 1990 and 2008, white women without a high school diploma lost a full five years of their lives, while their male counterparts lost three years. Experts say that declines in life expectancy in developed countries are exceedingly rare, and that in the U.S., decreases on this scale “have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918.” Even during the Great Depression, which wrought economic devastation and severe psychic trauma for millions of Americans, average life expectancy was on the increase.

Strangely, its the Scandinavians that appear to hate themselves the most, even though they had no role in the imperial conquests. Their societies were still quite poor until after the Second World War. And all of them except Finland are monarchies. Even their cousins in Minnesota are loons.

"Strangely, its the Scandinavians that appear to hate themselves the most, even though they had no role in the imperial conquests."

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish self-hatred from self-righteousness. If you look at white liberals who suffer from white guilt they don't really hate themselves. They hate white people in general, they believe white people in general are evil oppressors, but they think they themselves (and their white liberal friends) are not evil at all. They see themselves as being particularly virtuous.

They believe all white people are guilty of the Original Sin of being born white, but they themselves and their friends are Saved. They are the Elect. That's why Social Justice activism is essentially a Christian heresy. It's a kind of secular belief in predestination. If you're a Social Justice Warrior then you must be automatically saved. You can then turn all your attentions to hating other white people because they're Unredeemed Sinners.

The Scandinavians seem to have adopted a collective version of this. All white nations are evil and sinful, except for the Scandinavian nations. They are the Elect. Because they haven't been imperial powers. Which is of course isn't true - the Swedes were an aggressive imperialist power in the 17th century but the Swedes pretend that never happened.

The trouble with being Saved and free from Sin is that it's no fun unless you make sure everyone knows how Pure and Good you are. The only way to demonstrate this is by doing virtuous things. By doing Good Works. Hence the Scandinavian obsession with being virtuous even if it kills their own society.

It's also possible the Scandinavians believe they are so virtuous that somehow they will be magically protected from the consequences of their own folly. Multiculturalism might be a disaster elsewhere but that's because other white countries are composed of Evil Racist Sinners. But in the Scandinavian countries it will work because they're so virtuous.

This is what happens when Christianity gets abandoned - you get these bizarre and deadly secular heretical religions.

David Mills is not Christian whatever his pretences. He is a liberal who rejects, at least in part, the divine order. God did not create equality which is an impossibility to achieve. He created a hierarchical order of plant, animal and human life. Races are not equal in ability and civilisational achievements. Whites created superior societies and have accordingly achieved a higher standard of living and intellectual development than others.

In terms of life expectancy, whites of all classes are living shorter lives. The more educated classes are dying of cancer, the incidence of which has grown hugely. Much of that may be attributed directly to the food industry in which the control of food production and distribution is largely corporate. Nature intended food to be eaten seasonally and naturally.

It is thus the rejection of the divine order of racial hierarchies and the adulteration of nature by chemicals for profit which has created the loss of confidence and leadership of whites and their reduced life expectancy.Ultimately this is a spiritual issue.

Anon, I agree with most of this, but to me it's less important that whites were the race which pushed forward civilisationally - even if that weren't true, it would still be the case that people ought to identify positively as part of their ethny and try to contribute positively to their own ethnic tradition.